What made the Lord of the Rings trilogy so good? A quarter of a century after The Fellowship of the Ring hit cinemas, it often feels as if everyone’s still puzzling this out, like one of those Einstein theories that took decades for scientists to be able to prove correct. Peter Jackson’s JRR Tolkien adaptations seemed to do the impossible, transforming nerdish high fantasy into blockbuster fare that was both critically acclaimed and widely popular. Most every subsequent attempt to do the same – barring, perhaps, the front-loaded Game of Thrones phenomenon – has failed to bottle that same lightning.
This is the big problem facing The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, a new film set in Jackson’s version of Middle Earth. Neither prequel nor sequel, the film squeezes itself into an ellipses in the original Fellowship, and focuses on the search for ring-obsessed wretch Gollum (Andy Serkis). Alongside Serkis, Sir Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood reprise the roles of Gandalf and Frodo respectively, while Lee Pace returns as his Hobbit trilogy character, Thranduil. The big news, though, is in those not returning: Aragorn, played definingly by Viggo Mortensen in the original trilogy, will now be portrayed by Fifty Shades of Grey’s Jamie Dornan.
